Fallout 3 is the best example of uncanny valley phenomenon.<p>In original Fallout you enter a city which spans across four screens, repetetively uses the same set of limited sprites and is inhabited by some random moving pixels acting as citizens of which several have some interesting dialog lines.<p>The Fallout 3 seems similar at first, only employing a major leap in technological advancement - the city spans in every direction, there are animated and voice acted characters, and everyone is presented in cutting edge 3D technology.<p>But it all falls flat upon closer inspection. Every building is exactly the same. Dialogs are mundane and everyone has some sort of hiking accident where they took an arrow to the knee and even though the city has only 8 buildings its easy to get lost.<p>The reason is simple - in the original the story takes place mainly in your head, it's a mind's eye theatre, the game only gives you a broad outlines of the world and you are forced to fill out the blanks yourself. The game doesn't try to be realistic and leaves you a lot of space.<p>Once you start animating and voice acting your characters you quickly realize it's an endless money pit. The more lines you add, the cost grows exponentially, because you have to account for all localisation scenarios.<p>This is summed up very well (forgive me for not looking up reference and quoting from memory) by Bioshock lead who said in interview:<p>"At work if I have an idea we need to assemble a team - including programmers, modellers, scripters - and just to get a basic prototype that would give us the gist of what we were thinking it takes a month or more. Meanwhile, at home, I can relax after work, and in one evening session create a whole Doom campaign."
Very negative depiction of Fallout 2 here. I would instead strongly recommend it, especially to players who liked the first Fallout, or who liked Fallout New Vegas. It does not feel as heartless and disjointed as the article suggests, instead it is a bigger game than its predecessor with more variety and options. Lots of roleplaying and great lore with good quests and interesting characters.
I got my start with CRPGs playing Bard's Tale, all the SSI Gold Box games, Wizardry and then Ultima Underworld.<p>I really miss the variety of CRPGs we used to have. I don't like real-time games. I like being able to chill playing turn-based games (including strategy games like Civ). I don't think I'm alone in that and it's one of those fundamental misunderstanding game publishers have: thinking players want "hard" games, which for a CRPG (or, rather, an ARPG) really means how fast you can react.<p>But I really dislike the Bethesda CRPG model, which is really the only model left. I hate scaling content. It's lazy. I really dislike that in games like Skyrim you have to level efficiently or you get weaker (because of content scaling) and that forces you to do some non-fun things to optimize your levelling.<p>I know a lot of people enjoyed the Fallout serivce. For me, the aesthetics killed it for me. A brown wasteland just isn't aesthetically pleasing as a fantasy environment.<p>To contradict myself, I have to give special mention to Zelda: Breath of the Wild. I wish I could erase my memory to play that game for the first time again. It's not without its issues but the feeling you have of being in the world is virtually unmatched by any other game.
I loved both of these games and spent a lot of time with them. The Baldur's Gate review here stays pretty close to others I've read, but the Fallout 2 review is the more interesting part because it's more opinionated, and in ways I disagree with. It's interesting how much everyone involved seemed to dislike the game, but very much fits the late 90's vibe. It's also what made it one of my all-time favorites. I never felt like I was playing through someone else's story. It felt like a set of content you could actually create your own character and play through, directed by your character's own motivations rather than the writer's. It's a quality that's rare to find in games, but the conditions of a bunch of people creating as much content as they could without a specific direction make sense for how this kind of thing would have to come together. Baldur's Gate is great, but much more linear and gives less opportunities for choices and role-playing. I wish more games would revisit the freedom of Fallout 2.
Two favorite games. The infinity engine / interplay crpgs were all a blast until iron heart where they rushed it out the door. Even that has a ton of promise first half to third if the game.<p><a href="https://rpgcodex.net/content.php?id=10505" rel="nofollow">https://rpgcodex.net/content.php?id=10505</a>